Heidegger

—– Original Message —–
From: “Bakker, R.B.M. de”

—–Oorspronkelijk bericht—–
Van: heidegger-bounces atsoca.ecu.edu.au
[mailto:heidegger-bounces atsoca.ecu.edu.au]Namens Anthony Crifasi

First, both natura and physis are opposed to inertia - not by me, but by
both Aristotle and the medievals themselves. That’s not my doing - read
their own words (such as the quote above). So whatever distinction there is
between natura and physis makes no difference here - they are identical in
that regard … which in turn should make you question the supposed gap
between physis and natura. Philosophers often exaggerate differences in the
history of philosophy at the expense of similarities in order to support
their pet theories - or agendas.

Secondly, as if the moderns could not easily account for why trees root in
the ground and grow upwards, which is precisely why physis became no more -

—
What does it mean, ultimately, that physis is no more? No more
being-of-itself,
only makability, techne in an exclusive sense: not the techne of
Aristotle,
which is opposed to and given its place in relation to (dependence on0
physis.

Vom Wesen und Begriff der physis, on this relation on account of the
doctor
healing/recovering:

“Being-a-doctor is not the disposing issuance [arche] of the recovery,
but being-man and this only insofar as man is a zoion, living, which
only lives, while it ‘bellies’.” (lebt, indem es
‘leibt’)

============================
That is simply not an accurate reading of the passage - it is *precisely*
insofar as man is a doctor that he can heal himself. But since
being-a-doctor is incidental to being-a-man, the change in question here
(self-healing) is not a manifestation of physis. In other words, Aristotle
uses the example to illustrate the self-emergence of physis because the
source of the doctor’s recovery happens to be the doctor himself, but since
the source of the recovery is really accidental to what the doctor is (i.e.,
a man), it is really not an example of physis at all, but only an
illustration. Aristotle in many places explicitly states that medicine is
techne, not physis.
============================

The disappearing of physis touches plants, animals, but also the being,
which man is himself. Heidegger foresees in 1942 the selfproduction
of man as the inevitable consequence of unbounded technology.
Your enthusiasm for the civil war in Iraq as booming economy dwells in
the
same dimension, where the living and dying of men is a mere economic
factor.

============================
a factical response to your factical charge.
============================

- modern physics could account for all that physis could account for, and
more. And if you think that this principle of efficiency is in turn a modern
invention, think again:

“The next question is whether the principles are two or three or more in
number. One they cannot be, for there cannot be one contrary. Nor can they
be innumerable, because, if so, Being will not be knowable: and in any one
genus there is only one contrariety, and substance is one genus: also a
finite number is sufficient, and a finite number, such as the principles of
Empedocles, is better than an infinite multitude; for Empedocles professes
to obtain from his principles all that Anaxagoras obtains from his
innumerable principles.” (Aristotle, Physics I.6)

Efficiency cannot, of course, be the criterium, Being is.
Archai, argues Aristotle in book A, make sense only if there is
something
of which they are the principle. And this something is precisely
that which must occur (’hypokeisthoo’, Vorliegen). And that again
is what physis is doing, being-of-itself.
Without this (metaphysical) structure, talk of archai makes no sense.
The question for the number of archai is posed within this context, and
not with respect to a medieval (Ockham), or even modern notion of
efficiency.

======================
Both Empedocles and Anaxagoras posit archai to explain “something of which
they are the principle” - so that is not the issue in the above passage. The
question, rather, is which is preferable, and Aristotle explicitly states
that Empedocles’ finite principles are preferable to Anaxagoras’ infinite
number precisely because “Empedocles professes to obtain from his principles
all that Anaxagoras obtains from his innumerable principles.” That’s
Aristotle’s razor.
======================

The other way around can be seen that physis as occurring of itself
has retreated in medieval philosophy, where creation is the reason
for the being of everything, and even further out of sight since Galilei
and Descartes, where it is the ponere by the subjectum, which makes
things
be what they are. Mere efficiency only appears when even no subjectivity
is
needed anymore.

=======================
The modern rejection of physis by Galilei and Descartes was not a steady
progression in the retreat of physis, but a complete break from all that
came before - from both Aristotle and the medievals together. Both Aristotle
and Thomas Aquinas, for example, opposed the principle of inertia, and for
precisely the same philosophical reason - if motion is a coming-to-be, and
what cannot be (i.e., arrival at infinity) cannot come-to-be; therefore,
there can be no motion tending to infinity. Any observable evidence for or
against inertia is therefore observable evidence for or against Aristotelian
physis.
=======================

And another example, recently in the news here: young Chinese farmers
have
left their villages, in order to play video-games all day/night, making
them fit
for the Western market. The dissolution of physical/metaphysical reality
into virtual reality cannot be stopped, but more terrible than even
that is the unability and unwill to notice it. It namely leaves out a
factor,
which cannot be left out, except by self-elimination. Even more
worrying: not
even by that.

=====================
The fact that is the most worrying thing about China to you bespeaks
everything.
=====================

Posted on Sunday, December 31st, 2006 at 6:25 pm
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